Sexism in the Ruby community: how does the Python community manage it?

[Modulok]

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 9:13 PM, Owen Jacobson <owen.jacobson at grimoire.ca>wrote:

> Last week, Elad Maidar wrote a fairly short but readable opinion piece[0]
> illustrating some long-standing social problems in the Ruby community,
> ending with a very specific call to action around naming conventions for
> Ruby projects and gems. To save you the trouble of scrolling to the bottom
> of this post and clicking, here's the relevant bit:
>
>  What is missing you ask? I think that there is no consideration in women
>> when it comes to gem naming convention, here are a few gems that i found in
>> a 5 mintues search on Rubygems.org to demonstrate why women and other
>> groups probably feel uncomfortable when trying to get into the Rails
>> community:
>>
>> * retarded
>> * bitch
>> * hoe
>> * womanizer
>> * recursive_pimp_slap
>> * miniskirt
>> * childlabor
>> * bj
>> * sex
>> * fuck
>> * rape-me
>> * therapist - yeah, It passes as a double meaning - but still.
>> * shag
>> * db_nazi
>> * and ass
>>
>> While some of you may think this is a righteous callout - I think that as
>> a community we need to strive to be as appealing as possible, there is
>> nothing cool about naming your gem “fuck” or “retarded” and we as a
>> community - need to stop this from happening as much as we can.
>>
>
> Read the rest, it's pretty good.
>
> (A number of the named gems have been pulled by their authors.)
>
> It occurred to me to go digging around pypi - arguably[1] the Python
> community's equivalent to gems - to see if I could find similar
> institutionalized sexism.
>
> The good news: the specific examples Elad called out are STRIKINGLY absent
> from pypi. By and large the published python packages are inobjectionable.
> Well done, "us", in as much as there is an "us" to congratulate.
>
> There are a few examples of the same sort of bad decision-making that are,
> I think, worth discussing:
>
> * SexMachine (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/**SexMachine/0.1.1<https://pypi.python.org/pypi/SexMachine/0.1.1>- an attempt to detect the gender of names, which… well, ask the nearest
> boy named Sue - or girl named Leslie)
> * sexytime (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/**sexytime/0.1.0<https://pypi.python.org/pypi/sexytime/0.1.0>
> )
> * pep8nazi (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/**pep8nazi/0.1<https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pep8nazi/0.1>- do we shove non-PEP8-compliant authors into "showers" now?)
>
> So, two questions:
>
> 1. What social biases and problems *do* we unwittingly encourage by way of
> community-tolerated behaviour? Where, if not through the conventions for
> naming, do we encourage sexism, racism, and other mindlessly exclusionary
> behaviour?
>
> 2. What kind of social pressure can we bring to bear to _keep_ Python's
> package naming conventions as socially neutral as they are, if and when
> some high-profile dirtbag decides this language is the best language? How
> can we apply the same pressures to other parts of the Python community?
>
> 3. How can we reach out to the Ruby community and help *them* get past the
> current crop of gender issues, and help them as a group to do better next
> time?
>
> I'm very much on the side of education, tolerance, and social
> consequences, not administrative fiat or organized retaliation. I think
> Elad's call for the Rubygems folks to unilaterally drop libraries is
> misguided, but well-intentioned, and I don't think the same sort of call
> towards Pypi to drop "unacceptable" library names is a good idea either.
> However, I think it's hugely important and hugely beneficial that we
> welcome as many folks into the Python community as possible, and do our
> best to foster an environment where people can succeed regardless of who or
> what they are, and recent evidence suggests that that requires ongoing
> conversation and engagement, not just passive acceptance.
>
>
(The following is more of a satire reply to the original article than to
your
 message. Entertainment, but some real thoughts to ponder as well.
 I think your suggestion of education and encouragement are good
 ideas... maybe. However, I do feel this is a non-issue.)

This is more of a social argument than a programming issue
and I'd argue it's even a non-issue. Since I'm waiting for a render to
finish,
and we known in advance we're simply wasting time discussing social and
personal morality that won't amount to anything by next week, let's rock.
One
for the archives...

Are we to police the names of computer files over the idea that someone
might
be offended or excluded or isn't included enough? Are we to form a
committee of
name approvers? Do we delete or change potentially offensive names? What if
that means we break other code that depended upon those names? Who decides
what
is offensive? In what culture? In what language? In what era? In what
context?
Do we extend this idea to the names of other identifiers like variables and
functions?

    foo.fuck_off()

Does that get excluded as well? How about the documentation? A very slippery
slope.

Perhaps we could enforce a naming convention that takes into account a
balance
of module names, some which appeal to female, some to male, some to black,
to
white, yellow, brown, - Darwin's grab bag. Of course, who decides the ratios
that these names will appear in the module index? Do we mimic the human
population, the community population or is it more about equal slices all
around?

We could pick random words from the dictionary - My mistake. I just found
'fuck', 'bitch', 'sex',  'retard', 'shag', 'ass', 'womanizer' and 'hoe'
listed there too.
There are others as well! Maybe we can start a sister project to manage
offensive words found in the dictionary!  Or should that be a 'brother'
project?
A sibling project, perhaps? Hmm.

~~~

If I want to name a module `fuck_off_and_die`, I should be perfectly
allowed to
do so. It's my module, my code, my project - my choice. Does it make me an
insensitive prick? Maybe, but I'd be very hesitant to judge someone's
personal
character based solely on the name of a python module. To do otherwise would
render the one passing judgment a pretentious prick - really no better.

Does it lack professionalism? Perhaps. Is the module itself useful? Now
that's
a far more important question. The day we come up with a blacklist of
forbidden
names and start excluding what could otherwise have been useful bits of
publicly available code - a charitable work of skilled labor - I think we
will
have lost something far more valuable than having a G-rated module index.

That said, I appreciate and try to express professionalism in all that I do
and
encourage others to do the same but I also embrace the freedom of myself and
others to choose - even if I think that choice is sexist and distasteful.

I would rather experience the freedom of having the full latitude of life,
decision and emotion, than to cower in fear of being offended by the world
at
large. To think that I would be capable of being offended by the
arrangement of
a glyph in a programming package index, is a ridiculous thought indeed.

Yup.
-Modulok-
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